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Echoes of The Big Bang

Imagining the universe's origin isn't easy 13.75 billion years later.

By

Manjit Kumar

March 27, 2012 1:24 p.m. ET

'The theory is beautiful beyond comparison" is how Albert Einstein modestly described his theory of gravity, known as general relativity. He believed that "scarcely anyone who fully understands this theory can escape its magic." In the years since 1916, when he published a paper setting out the theory, few have disagreed, yet buried within his greatest achievement was also what Einstein considered "my greatest blunder."

The equations of general relativity can be solved in a number of different ways,...